Google to cough up $140 million in British back Taxes

Google to cough up $140 million in British back Taxes

Google will have to pay $140 million in British back taxes as per a shift driven concession seeing how the tech giant measures its success in the country.

The accord came after rising criticism against major U.S. companies who are scrimping on taxes with many accounting maneuvers, rankling the governments all over the world.

In UK, Google faced accusations for not paying fair taxes in a country which is its second largest market. Similar complaints have been registered against Amazon, Starbucks and Facebook!

Google has kept its headquarters in Ireland (low tax rate) to minimize its tax bills. This has indeed helped the company in maximizing profits and stock prices. The Alphabet Inc. presently has $73 billion cash!

UK Chancellor of exchequer, George Osborne tweeted:

These tactics sure got Google inviting British Government’s HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) to do a rigorous inquiry that continued for six years.

Google insisted that no laws have been broken and agreed upon the deal with HMRC.

The deal requires Google to pay tax bill based on its profit as well as revenue generated from ads in the country.

The deal too was criticized for being “insufficient”.

Google generated $5.1 billion ad revenue in UK last year.

Google said in a statement, “The way multinational companies are taxed has been debated for many years and the international tax system is changing as a result.”

Nick Xenophon, Australian Independent Senator commented, “I just hope the Australian Tax Office search for any missing Google tax millions is as powerful as the Google search engine.”